DIM SUM!!

WOW!!  Our most elaborate attempt at foreign cooking yet.  The original intent was to try out a new Chinese restaraunt that's supposed to be good, but the library had a book called Dim Sum with pictures and recipies and I lost all control.  Yesterday's dinner menu was: rice, crab dumplings, potstickers, orange meatballs, scallion pancakes, stuffed mushrooms, and stuffed bao bread all made from scratch! Dave and Catherine were drafted naturally, and we are all proud of ourselves.   We hung a Chinese lantern (50 cents at a yard sale), turned on some Chinese pop music from the internet, Catherine and I stuck chopsticks in our hair and we had a feast. 

To my immense delight none of these dishes was very hard.  I picked them out with an eye toward spending the least possible money on weird sauces that we would never eat again and discovered that it was possible to feast on the cheap.  To take this item by item:

Rice-duh.
Potstickers---The scary thing here was making the wrappers.  The recipe is 3/4 cup flour 1/3 cup water.  I just couldn't believe it would work.  I ate some mighty tough tortillas based on the same idea.  It works FINE! I divided up the dough in 24 portions as recommeded, which forced me to roll the wrappers very thin and enabled me to do the fancy pleating and everything.  Result was surprisingly professional--although I wonder how many hundreds of potstickers a real Chinese cook could make in the time it took me to make 24.  Filling was basically pork, scallions and cabbage--first fry lightly in oil then add water and cover.

Crab Dumplings--wrappers the same as the potstickers with the addition of a little spinach.  Filling was cooked shrimp lump crab.  These are steamed for 10 minutes.

Orange meatballs--yum--they're supposed to be steamed, but we only have one small steamer--so we baked them--ground beef, orange peel, oyster sauce are main ingredients. 

Bao Bread--possibly my favorite discovery.  A simple yeast bread dough--then roll out in 3 inch circles--stuff with a pork filling--gather at the top to close, fry briefly and then steam.  Simply terrific texture.  Must try again because I burned the bottoms slightly.

Scallion pancakes--another flour based dough make the dough, roll, sprinkle scallions, fold up in a fancy Chinese tube then squish tube and roll again into pancake shape--fry.

Stuffed mushrooms--again pork filling and again a bit of frying and then steaming.

Time-wise--not something I'd want to do everyday--about an hour to make the fillings on Saturday and then about three hours on Sunday to put everything together and cook it.  Would go much faster next time now that we have an idea.  Still, loads of fun and since our kitchen is tiny we got to enjoy some real Chinese style crowding too.

Judge Dee

Mystery lovers check out the Judge Dee mysteries by Robert Van Gulik.  Van Gulik was a scholar of Chinese culture and these mysteries are based on ancient Chinese detective stories.   They are set in about 7th century China and have a very authentic feel to them.  One of the beauties of detective fiction is that details of everyday life are central to the story so you get to find out what people are wearing, how they spend their time, how they treat their families, what they eat and what their hobbies are--probably more than in any other kind of literature. Van Gulik is a first class writer and the books are loads of fun.  I meant to read one this month--and I just went and checked out two more.

Tonsils

Funny how once something is in your mind everything comes out of the woodwork to enhance the concept.  Today we were in the hospital recovery room with Catherine because she had her tonsils out.  Being in China (or anywhere else) was the last thing on my mind--or it would have been except that the top magazine in the room was "Smithsonian" with THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA on the front cover.  Well you can't fight fate.  I learned that the great wall is 4,000 miles long, not 2000.  Catherine is doing fine and I'm grateful for Western medicine--especially general anethesia.

Things to See

Chloe, a professor I work with from Beijing, recommends the following as must sees. 

I would say Jiuzhaigou or Nine Stockaded Village channel, Tibet, Mount Huangshan, and Big Shang Hai Area (including Shang Hai City and surrounding areas).

Engrish

Oh my---BEST website  engrish.com  What passes for English in other countries--especially China and Japan is really, REALLY funny.  The website has a special link for Chinglish and these gems were posted today.

At a restaraunt you can order: Steamed mini dread
A park sign pointing to a garbage can:  No not disorder rubbish here
A sign on the grass: Please take care of the sleeping grass.

There are HUNDREDS of these things with pictures.  I'll have to make a point of reading these daily while I'm in China.

Dead Fish

I asked my friend Xin Zhang what she misses most about China.  "THE FOOD! THE FOOD! THE FOOD! You people here eat DEAD fish!"  "You mean you like raw fish like sushi?" "NO! The Chinese cook their fish--(small rant here about crazy Japanese cuisine).  But when I go to the store here the fish is frozen. It is dead.  I asked if Chinese food in America bears any relation to real Chinese food.  HUGE eyeball roll.  Xin says she can cook 100 times better than the Chinese restaraunts, but that she is not considered a good cook.  "In China I am a stupid cook. My father won't let me into the kitchen." 

According to Xin we should skip Shanghai--it's just like New York and not at all the real China.  She also described a fun place but couldn't tell me what it was in English.  Somewhere in China there is a huge flat rock--that is covered by about six inches of water. I'm still not sure if it's part of a river or a lake.  But the rock is so smooth and the water so shallow ("only this thick") that it feels as if you're walking ON the water.  People come from all over just to walk around and play on this rock.  Xin says that China is fun because there are so many people and all of them are thinking of fun things to do all the time.

The Forbidden City

This is the first place I want to go if I ever get to China.  How could anybody resist with a name like--The Forbidden City?  It was the central location of goverment for China for hundreds of years.  My Chinese friend said the palace complex has 9991/2 rooms.  This is because the first emperor that lived there was offspring of the Sun God. The Sun had 1,000 rooms in his palace so naturally his own son would not be permitted to equal or outdo his father. 

Palaces and beautiful places are common enough in the world.  What makes the Forbidden City special to me are the NAMES of everything.  These are just great.  For starters, here is a picture of "The Hall of Imperial Zenith."

  

In the outer court we'll find "The Hall of Supreme Harmony," "The Hall of Central Harmony" and "The Hall of Preserving Harmony."  Somewhere there is also the "Hall of Medium Harmony."  In the Inner Court there is "The Palace of Heavenly Purity," "The Hall of Union" and the "Palace of Earthly Tranquility."  

Apparently the emperors used to live in the "Palace of Earthly Tranquility" until the Qing Dynasty--after that he lived in the smaller "Hall of Mental Cultivation."  

Also in the complex is the "Pavillion of 10,000 Spring Seasons", the "Hall of Union and Peace," "The Hall of Protective Harmony", "The Gate of Divine Prowess" and finally "The Hill of Accumulated Elegance."

I don't know about you, but I could do with some "Supreme Harmony, Tranquility and Elegance."